Everald, your ignorance of the subject despite your involvement in Seniors groups is astounding. Every taxpayer since 1942 has been paying a 7.5% income tax surcharge to provide for retirement pensions.

The Reserve Bank and Treasury Heads and a senior Economist, really Everald? Gee, would be better to have three members of the nearest bus stop.The Reserve Bank and Treasury are both failed institutions ruled by grossly overpaid Popinjays. We should concentrate on reducing ALL public service wages over $50K and keeping them within bounds. When the economy fails the Treasury will not admit they failed and the Reserve Bank Governor will apportion blame but accept none. Then both will bow out with pensions ten times the size of the minimum wage.The previous poster was correct we have paid for our full pension and Keating stole ours whilst ensuring he retired and made a handsome quid since.

Posted by JBowyer, Thursday, 10 December 2015 8:55:18 AM

A fairer tax system would allow pensions to be doubled along with the economy boosting discretionary spend that would accompany such change!

We are rapidly heading into territory where tax concessions on millionaires super will cost the budget bottom line more than the aged pension; as does the 60+ billion per current multinational tax avoidance!

Many of my friends set themselves up for a comfortable retirement only to have sharks, shonks and the GFC to remove their modest nest eggs, leaving them with no other choice than the pension and penury.

My mortgage and other recurrent expenses just didn't stop when my salary did. And even though I was in a good super scheme, which included 80% salary replacement for up to three years. It ran out years before my day in court and the shafting that was my worker's compensation experience!

You think that an injury, [and multiple serious spinal surgeries'] that cost you both your career and your marriage, would have a better fairer outcome?

Look, the insurance company spent millions to avoid paying me what the injury should have meant, just a fraction over $350.00.

Had they settled out of court, they would have saved significant money all while significantly increasing my unpublished payout to where it would have been far greater than anything awarded by the court and the FORMULA! Their aim was to avoid setting a legal precedent!

You are allegedly insured warts and all! They have no trouble taking the money! Decent fairer compensation should have meant enough to live on if wisely invested, without recourse to the public purse! And that my friend is supposed to be the FORMULA!

For mine, a fairer simpler tax system would allow/make doable a 15% noncontributory compulsory super and eventual phasing out of pensions, except where serious injury/war wounds/harm eventually limits the ability to earn a living wage/be self sufficient? Rhrosty.

Posted by Rhrosty, Thursday, 10 December 2015 10:12:15 AM

Times have changed as Fisher and Deakin didn't have all the hanger- oners that our governments have to deal with today.

All these noses in the trough had to be catered for, and the aged pension was an easy target.

My tip, our super will be next in line.

Posted by rehctub, Friday, 11 December 2015 5:55:40 AM

It's now twenty-five years since the introduction of the Keating master-superannuation plan, which ensured that only anyone on a regular, permanent paycheck could ever hope to retire with dignity.

Everyone else could get stuffed and live out their old age like Sadie the Cleaning Lady - i.e.work your red-detergent hands till you drop.

The self-employed, long-term unemployed and carers (of children, the disabled and elderly) were of absolutely no consequence to the multi-millionaire, hyper-superannuated Keating. Only the permanent full-time employed were fit for superannuation entitlement - for which 40% of the superannuation budget went to the top 6% of permanent salaried workers.

To say that the aged pension 'needs reviewing' is a massive understatement. With the first round of comfortably superannuated retirees from Keating's compulsory superannuation vision coming on board, we are now faced with the embarrassing fact that thousands of people who worked hard and paid taxes all their lives have to prove to Centrelink that they are destitute before they can qualify for a miserly income that would hardly keep a bird alive.

Yet, in this neo-liberal climate of 'screw the poor' and 'death to welfare', any hope of raising the aged-pension entitlement is about as realistic as pigs flying past my window.

Posted by Killarney, Friday, 11 December 2015 6:39:02 AM

..... which ensured that only anyone on a regular, permanent paycheck could ever hope to retire with dignity.

And whats wrong with that Killarney? You work, you pay super, you have a chance of a decent retirement. As for self employed, like myself, we have a choice whether to pay our own super or not. I chose to often at the cost of a new car/boat or holiday. That was my personal choice, so to suggest self employed miss out is a distortion, because its their personal choice.

Sadly, most people who retire very poorly is a case of self inflicted poverty, or the result of personal circumstances, most of which are avoidable one way or another.